Actually thinking a bit more about it, his traits should be Pyromania, Impervious (or Fortitude) and Unbreakable. Then at least he’s a threat in attack once you’ve burned everyone.
2 Likes
Give him impervious instead of warded, an extra turn after casting and lower his spell cost by 2 and 100% skull reduction. 5% better skin than gorgotha is ridiculous, make it full on. He needs to be a proper dwarf tank.
He’s only decent with a pair of highforge and bearded lady. (Famine should be 25 that thing still fills in one ds cast, it’s so annoying and has me literally screaming out loud)
2 Likes
I am totally for Impervious trait instead of Warded + gain an extra turn in his skill. Great suggestions bruddas!
3 Likes
Other that a buff on his attack i dont think they need to change him. I use him just to stun and burn. It delays the enemy enough for your team to start building an attack. I have him in 3rd position in some team because i only have 1 trait. Paired with jarl or sheggra or even demetrexia he works well for me.
1 Like
Nice to know someone uses him! Personally if I want to stun I use Khorvash or Manticore. A burning enemy is better than an enemy that is not burning, but it isn’t something I’d build a team around.
You say it delays their team… My issue is that filling stonehammer delays my team!
3 Likes
I dont use him in first position, so i dont have that problem. He generaes alot of gems so works in other positions too.
1 Like
There is actually a few that thinks he is good, I never understood it. But we all got our tastes I guess… 
1 Like
Stonehammer needs minimum 95% skull reduction, but I would totally be fine with 100%. He should also be given the same trait king highforge has, fortitude. Then, add to his spell an attack buff (so he gains life+attack on cast) OR a free turn to his spell. He could still be countered by freeze, then.
His 3rd trait is not a problem, taking 2-3 damage more per skull hit with his currently 3rd trait is okay. His main problem is his currently skill, its super weak.
1 Like
Seems very likely he’ll get Fortitude. His spell is rubbish though and needs rewriting completely…
1 Like
It’s maybe a spoiler about @Nimhain’s next lair so…
You can find these lines in a game file:
<Text tag=“[TROOPHELP_FORTITUDE_1]”>Fortitude</Text>
<Text tag=“[TROOPHELP_FORTITUDE_2]”>Dwarves ignore Stun, Death Mark, Disease, Poison, and Devour effects.</Text>
It seems that all dwarves should have Fortitude. Maybe for Khaziel’s buff…
2 Likes
I think the problem with his spell is how the gems are created. I have perceived There is a difference between how the gems populate the board between him and Gar’Nok.
An extra turn would sort that out. It’s his colours, he seems to block everyone decent, especially if he is going to front a dwarf team. Lord ironbeard for his triple red damage for example, totally blocked, so is his Mrs. He’s very difficult to integrate successfully.
2 Likes
Looks like I’m a few days behind here.
Herdmaster: He is a bit hamstrung in the generator department by both using yellow and exploding yellow gems, plus having air link which increases the likelihood that yellow will get matched away by the AI. It would make more sense for him to have Magic Link instead of Air Link. I miss the days when he was Impervious, as there was actually an Impervious cleanse option in the game and an actual counter to silence rather than the standard “have whole team be immune or don’t let it cast”. Alert would be nice to replace either of the other current traits, he certainly doesn’t need Leader and Centaur Bond is filler. No change is strictly needed, though, because being an exploder and cascades being the way that they are plus his cleanse will keep him relevant, even if different aspects of his design don’t quite mesh and he is pretty easy to counter.
Green Slime: Actually a pretty decent generator, but generally gets overshadowed by Giant Spider who has autonomy on which color to convert, a summon, and the benefit of being a beast for synergy. Still, I don’t think any buffs are needed here, because it still can fill the role of a purple generator quite effectively, especially with “blob” calculation on Unity.
Borealis: Ah, Borealis. To realize why this troop is not good, you have to look the whole package and the intent behind it. It really has nothing to do with the damage to mana ratio on his spell. The setup was clearly made to have it be a threat of a skull striker with the combination of his spell and third trait. Only… he does this really poorly. Probably the among the worst option that can use this setup, in fact. He cannot reliably hold freeze on the first target to take advantage of the trait if he is the only freeze troop, and even on frozen troops with no skull resistance he generally won’t threaten a one-shot on a frozen troop without dealing damage to it first. It doesn’t help that his spell is random, not targeted, so you can’t even soften. There are multiple commons that can use similar setups that are straight up better at it than Borealis with equal, or even less support, and the two other legendaries that can use similar setups (Crimson Bat for x2, Webspinner for x3) require less support to do so, plus stay in a state where they continue to deal increased damage without very specific intervention. Webspinner even has the benefit of softening the entire team, bringing them into kill range with skulls for most non-resistant troops, and having a chance at the extra turn, while Bat doubles as an extremely potent true damage troop.
Borealis, in the utility department, is Mab lite, because Mab supported by a converter keeps the enemy team frozen without the need to expend turns or mana to do so, Borealis, even being fed mana, freezes all on what was likely a neutral board, which wears off while you are refilling your other troops since he is a mana and turn dead end. The whole conditional skull striker setup in general is very all or nothing and isn’t really good in the first place, so I’d rather see Borealis get a complete rework than just a buff, spell and trait included, to give him either a presence in damage (full AoE with freeze, damage boosted by freeze, trait that does something with else freeze such as adding magic or increasing damage versus frozen targets for everyone) or a persistent freeze threat (lower mana cost, gain mana back for each blue gem or conditional extra turn or some kind of board mod, keep the lowish spell damage). As he is now, he is a second rate freeze troop and third-rate setup required skull striker (behind commons even, for crying out loud) with extremely poor spell damage.
Stonehammer:
Stonehammer is a wall in a meta where there are a million tools to get around the wall or even straight through it (enrage), making him almost completely irrelevant. While occasionally of limited use in Guild Wars to cover specific colors, a misfire even in a “safe” situation where the enemy wont be able to kill or greatly damage you off collected mana will still cost you a ton of score, especially with the new scoring rules, so strike that too. When AI sliders come into effect, thats another nail in the coffin for him.
Starting with traits, while not bad, he could use Fortitude instead of thick head and warded, plus at least one skull striking trait to make him an actual threat. Clobber makes more sense than Pyromania to make him an actual skull threat as a replacement trait. He is dead weight versus mana drain or devour or stat drops, which is pretty much everything you fight on defense, and doesn’t actually do anything to prevent deathmarks on your team outside of stunning a deathknight or body blocking a deathtouch, and there are much better ways of dealing with either of them. He does not have tools to appropriately deal with any of the common defense threats of today, especially given the mana cost on his spell.
Speaking of the spell… like most mythics that possibly could be placed up front, they block one color from nearly every relevant generator, hamstringing your entire team by using them in that slot. Stonehammer is only relevant up front, and suffers the same problem. If he is going to continue to spawn gems gems, he needs either or of them, or less but of one color - 15 total of two specific colors, one being brown, is just begging to backfire and to a Famine or even a Khorvash and get your team manadrained into oblivion. Forever, since you have him blocking a bunch of colors up front so it is not likely you’ll get your generator going again, and he is too weak to make any headway with skulls. Any number of gem spawns carries this unnecessary risk really, since the spell itself does nothing to stop the enemy from using misfires and wiping out the rest of your team, or to establish himself as a threat, and is only has a small chance of feeding anything to your damage dealers or himself. Adding some attack gain to his spell would help the fact that he kinda sits there uselessly without either a ton of support or cascade luck, but I’d rather not go that route while he has self looping potential.
I’d prefer that he be faster instead (24 > 20 mana) with a skull striking trait (Clobber), more comprehensive defense (Fortitude) and either spawn more gems or possibly just gain an extra turn instead of hazarding with low count random gem spawns, since upping his spawns ups the risk of him self looping, and that would be more annoying than threatening.
Other than that, I’m not really sure how to “fix” him while keeping with his original “wall” design, because walls don’t really work in the endgame meta, on defense or on invade most of the time, especially not when they have gigantic mana costs and block three colors. It remains clear to me that Stonehammer was devised to be a counter at the height of the pre-nerf BD/Wraith/Courage meta, and I’m convinced that this combo would have still torn him to shreds in two volleys, gaining 60 life and attack to all troops, long before he would generally be able to have the mana to cast, especially if he happens to get frozen by a stray skull before he can get the stun off. He is always going to remain of limited use in endgame so long as he is intended to be a wall, but it would help if he were just a tiny bit harder to circumvent.
5 Likes
Late to the party but I’m glad you came. Some excellent points here.
Herdmaster - I wasn’t playing before cleanse got nerfed and I agree that it would be great to give it back to him, especially as silence has made a bit of a comeback. Magic link for air link is also a great swap.
Stonehammer - totally agree about the anti wraith/BD intention. But ridiculous that they didn’t give him freeze immunity! Hardly a good counter to bone dragon if he creates a bunch of browns when frozen 
. I really think he could do with a colour change - as Dan pointed out he completely blocks the 2 best dwarves! Perhaps it’s finally time for a mythic that only takes 2 colours?
Borealis - everything you’ve said here is true. I can’t understand why him and Shadow dragon can’t target their spells. I would love to see Borealis be more like the glacial peaks story and have some powers that allude to his raven form. Maybe not a full transform (villager/werewolf style), but just some acknowledgement of his lore.
2 Likes
You will soon see brudda. I will add a new troop in 2 hours or so! 
1 Like
So it seems like most of us agree on Stonehammer: Unbreakable should be 100% resistance to skull, not 80.
An extra turn in his currently skill and possibly a Fortitude trait.
1 Like
Really excellent posts by both mithran and whiskeyjack. I too am enjoying reading this.
1 Like
Not only by them but from most of us brudda.
1 Like